Long Time Passing
Penny Mawdsley is a primary school teacher with an M.Ed. in Religious Studies and a member of the SoF UK steering committee. This poem, which appeared in the collection Surfing: Women on the Sea of Faith, captures the experience of a SoF annual conference.
What an age since we first came together! Tiered seats throbbed with expectation, excitement, Apprehension in anticipation of action. Here sat strangers, seeking sanctuary So much flotsam and jetsam on a sea of faith Fearful and somewhat wary of each other before IT HAPPENED, we were under way. Cupitt' s darts struck home, pursued by others' weaponry And, one by one, folk threw accustomed caution to the winds Aired questions and concerns common to the throng.
Such characters collected there! They leavened every group discussion, Livened up the bar and dining tables. Spirited chat sprung up in sundry places No intervention then by skilled Facilitators Ensuring fair play, gagging the garrulous And coaxing contributions from the timid! Who remembers the sparkling set-to between An urbane photographer from down-under in broad-brimmed hat And an earnest Methodist Radical, the one who urged us To engage in political action on behalf of the Third World? Or an impassioned argument on the sun-drenched terrace Between a feminist from the Metropolis (into knitting) And a motherly Mancunian, whose wit and wisdom warmed Those of us sitting on the sidelines?
Bar closing imposed no constraint on conversations Carried into the small hours by Quaker universalists And disenchanted Catholics who next morning clustered Contemplatively around a clump of driftwood on a table
And, hard to credit now, for such practice has been long Eschewed - we Anglicans celebrated an uneasy Eucharist, Sharing symbols of our past, less certain of our future Before we left to go our separate ways disclosures came: "Hands up Non-Realists!" and "Who agrees to stay aboard the yellow submarine to continue a journey together in the Sea of Faith?" Most of us answered emphatically that we did.